[25] Pope said that “it was mighty simple in Rowe to write a play now, professedly in Shakespeare’s style, that is, the style of a bad age!” He relished as little Milton’s “high style,” as he called it. “The high style would not have been borne even in Milton, had not his subject turned so much on such strange out-of-the-world things as it does.” Lord Shaftesbury would furnish a code of criticism in the days of Pope, when the “Gothic model” was proscribed by such high authorities. But Pope expressed unqualified approbation for the stately but classical “Ferrex and Porrex,” and occasioned Spence to reprint it;—a tragedy in the unimpassioned style and short breathings of the asthmatic Seneca.
[26] Coxeter, after a search of thirty years, faithfully collating the best of our old plays, tells us he happened to communicate his scheme to one who now invades it; but for what mistakes and confusion may be expected from the medley now advertising in ten volumes, he appeals to the “Gorboduc” which Spence had published by the desire of Pope; both these wits, and the future editor of “Old Plays,” Dodsley, had used the spurious edition! Coxeter’s judgment was prophetic in the present instance. “Dodsley’s Collection” turned out to be a chance “medley;” unskilled in the language and the literature and the choice of his dramatists, he, as he tells us, “by the assistance of a little common sense set a great number of these passages right;” that is, the dramatist of the dull “Cleone” brought down the ancient genius to his own, and, if he became intelligible, at least he was spurious. If, after all, some parts were left unintelligible, the reader must consider how many such remain in Shakespeare.
[27] A third edition lies before me, 1757. The preface of the first edition of 1733 was much curtailed in the second of 1740, as well as the notes—particularly those which Theobald describes as “rather verbose and declamatory, and so notes merely of ostentation.” The candour is admirable. The third edition seems a mere reprint of the second. The first edition is also curious for its plates preserving the costume or dress of the characters at the time.
[28] This was one of those literary secrets which are only divulged on that final day of judgment which happens to authors when, on the decease of their publishers, those literary cemeteries, their warerooms, open for the sale of what are called “their effects;” but which, in this instance of literary property, may be deemed “the ineffectual effects.” At the sale of “the effects” of Tonson, the great bibliopolist, in 1767, one hundred and forty copies of Pope’s “Shakespeare,” in six volumes quarto, for which the original subscribers paid six guineas, were disposed of at sixteen shillings only per set.—“Gent. Mag.,” lvii. 76.
[29] See “Quarrels of Authors.”
[30] Laharpe, in a paroxysm of criticism, had both to defend and to censure his great master, Voltaire, on the subject of the Marvellous in Tragedy; and, strange to observe, in the coldness of the Aristotelian-Gallic Poetic, our “monster-poet” carries away the palm. The critic acknowledges that, though he is loath to compare “Semiramis” to that “monster of a tragedy”—“Hamlet,” the Ghost there acts as a ghost should do, showing himself but to one person, and revealing a secret unknown to all but himself; while the Ghost of Ninus appears in a full assembly, only to tell the hero to listen to somebody else who knows the secret as well as the Ghost.—“Cours de Littérature.”
[31] Much, if not all, that is valuable in this great body of varied information, has been alphabetically arranged in “A Glossary, or Collection of Words, Phrases, Names, and Allusions to Customs, Proverbs, &c., which have required illustration in the works of English Authors, particularly Shakespeare and his Contemporaries,” by Archdeacon Nares, 4to, 1822: a compilation as amusing as it is useful, and which I suspect has not been justly appreciated. It is a substitute for all these commentators; and with this volume, at an easy rate, we are made free of the whole Shakespearian corporation.
[32] Monsieur Villemain, who possesses a perfect knowledge of our English writers on historical subjects, and many years since composed a life of Cromwell, has drawn up an elaborate article on Shakespeare in the “Biographie Universelle.” The perplexities of his taste, and the contradictory results of his critical decisions, are amusing; but it must have been a serious labour for a person of his strict candour. Our critic remains astonished at Johnson’s preference of Shakespeare’s comic to his tragic genius, which never can be, he adds, the opinion of foreigners. Monsieur Villemain is perfectly right; for no foreigner can comprehend the humour, not always delicate but strong, which often depends on the phrase, as well as on the character; but he errs when he can only discover in the comedy of Shakespeare merely a drama of intrigue, and not a picture of manners. Our critic has formed no conception of the poet’s ideal standard and universal nature; insomuch that to this day we continue to apply among ourselves those exquisite personal strokes of the comic characters of Shakespeare. Our critic, who cannot perceive that which perhaps only a native can really taste, is indignant at the enthusiastic critic who has decided that Molière only gave “a prosaic copy of human nature, and is merely a faithful or a servile imitator.” I suppose this critic is Schlegel, a prejudiced critic on system. I beg leave to add, that it is not necessary to decry the French Shakespeare to elevate our own. Molière is as truly an original genius as any dramatist of any age.
[33] This rare tract, which I once read in a private library which had been collected in the days of Pope, was apparently Voltaire’s entire composition; for the Gallicisms bear the impression of a foreigner’s pen, and of one determined to prove the authenticity of its source. “Voltaire, like the French in general,” said Dr. Young, “showed the greatest complaisance outwardly, and had the greatest contempt for us inwardly.” He consulted Dr. Young about his Essay in English, and begged him to correct any gross faults. The doctor set himself very honestly to work, marked the passages most liable to censure, and when he went to explain himself about them, Voltaire could not avoid bursting out and laughing in his face!—Spence.
Had Voltaire accepted the doctor’s verbal corrections, or the opinions suggested by him, something else than the “laughing in the face” had been recollected.